Criminal acts are as old as Humanity itself they tell Tales of anger and hatred greed and suffering death and depravity nothing affords us a deeper look into the Sinister depths of a past Epoch than the crimes committed during it many criminal cases of the distant past still remain unsolved today no one
Of the tools to detect the perpetrators but what was then impossible can now be done today’s Cutting Edge forensic science offers methods for solving many cold cases of antiquity high-tech Diagnostic and forensic procedures help to solve crimes that for centuries had left people scratching their heads arsonists are identified conspirators convicted and murderers
Unmasked the perpetrator trors may be long dead but their crimes live On in this episode we’ll investigate a Curious Case of infant death a spectacular arson attack and the deranged acts of a heretic a shocking find the remains of 450 dead babies were discovered in an ancient Greek well what had happened there Athens in the 2 Century before
Christ the city was then a flourishing center of the Mediterranean world the Romans had not yet conquered Greece it was the buzzling center of public life the marketplace called the agura just below the Acropolis this was not just a place to buy Fresh Foods but also to exchange change political
Opinions the word agara actually that means to come together to chat and this is a place where people came to exchange ideas and goods so politically culturally religiously socially in many ways this this was the kind of the center the the Beating Heart of golden age
Athens but the agura isn’t just key to Greek history it’s also foundational for Europe and all of modern civilization because this was the site of the first popular assembly in the history of humanity all residents of Athens were allowed to take part well not quite all women weren’t allowed slaves weren’t
Allowed at one point foreigners uh weren’t allowed either the agura today the ancient Athens Marketplace has been painstakingly excavated bit by bit during the dig the archaeologists discovered that this was not only the birthplace of democracy y but also the scene of gruesome Events at excavations right by the ancient agura a well more than 20 M deep was discovered at the bottom of it archaeologists made a shocking find the scattered remains skulls and bones of 450 dead babies was this evidence of a mass in fanticide dating back to Antiquity the case is still the subject
Of much scientific interest today no one has studied the Grim finds more exhaustively than archaeologist Susan rotr and Anthropologist Maria Lon they regularly inspect the scene of the crime right here where the tree is is where they found the babies where the babies were located 20 M deep in the
Well and this was a very dramatic event for them they were very shocked by finding it nothing like this had ever been found before it’s still the single largest deposit of Baby Bones that’s ever been found in a a single archaeological context in the World the two are not unmoved by their investigations and often reach their limits it is a very dark story and to a certain degree you can distance your yourself from it but when you stop to think about what is really involved what really happened here almost 2500 years
Ago uh then it does become disturbing and you sometimes just have to stop and think about something else for a while flashback the skulls of the 450 dead babies were discovered in 1938 by a team of American archaeologists who were Excavating the ancient agura of Athens the woman who conducted the
Excavation Dorothy Burr Thompson was later one of my professors and she encouraged me to think about it and see if I could find a solution to the mystery of how the babies came to be there one of the first theories was that it could indeed have been an horrific case of mass
Infanticide we have evidence from the ancient world of the Mass Slaughter of children you know you think for example of the slaughter of the Innocence at the time of Jesus when all male boys under the age of two uh were killed but that is really really unusual it’s really
Atypical what supports and what weakens the case for ancient multiple infanticides here the bones of the dead babies from The Well are now stored at the American School of classical studies in Athens here the scientists once again again take a close look at the finds 80 years after they were Discovered in some ways one of the biggest challenges was just the sheer number of bones there were over 13,000 infant bones in this collection and sorting those out and identifying them by age and trying to identify some individuals in that mass was very difficult a traumatological diagnosis of
The broken baby’s skulls produced no evidence that they had been violently crushed we were able to exclude that this was a mass murder infanticide anything like that because there was no evidence of violence to find out how the babies did die the researchers first needed to determine when their remains had been
Put in the well the pottery that was found alongside the remains of the 450 babies was a big help the pottery is very helpful in telling us the date because this particular style of drinking cup for example was popular only for about 15 years 165 to 150 BC decorated with
Figures of goats figures of Cupids and various images of that sort most of the pottery fines from the well were vessels used for the care of newborns right after birth perhaps the most unusual thing in the well was this small container uh with a tube it’s for feeding a small child
Perhaps a child with some kind of physical disability or difficulty um so you were trying to help it and and care for it by using this these are found almost exclusively engraves so it’s quite striking that we found it within the well but in addition to the pottery finds the
Skulls themselves also presented evidence that many of the dead babies from The Well in Athens had physical handicaps one of the infants had an unusual looking skull in which there were traces of a disease um that had caused the bone to grow very rapidly it had caused areas like the Fontanel the
Soft spot in the to not heal and in looking at at the sum of all this evidence it suggests it was a case of hydrophilus where there is too much cerebros spinal fluid it causes the skull to expand enormously and this ultimately would have killed the child the Anthropologist discovered
Physical deformities and other skeletons as well for example the upper jaw of nine of the baby skulls had a cleft pallet a virtual death sentence at the Time classical philosopher Aristotle stated that handicapped children had no right to life as in many other cultures the belief in unworthy life forms was also widespread in ancient Greece the ancient Greeks did not want to bring up children who were physically challenged for them they thought that
They’d been cursed somehow by the gods or Spirits or demons so they didn’t want to bring that bad religious luck into their homes it was quite normal uh that we we actually find bone evidence of children who have some kind of defamation who’ve been left to
Die as soon as a child was born it fell to the Midwife to examine it for possible handicaps when something was wrong her judgment was Swift and unsparing the Midwife would take the child from its mother the writings of philosopher plate tell us that abandoning such babies was
Common practice some were rescued by foster parents others left to die exposing infants and babies was such a normal part of ancient Greek life that actually makes its way into the myths and legends told about Greek society so there was even a God heus the the the
Great forging God who was the child of Hera uh the wife of Zeus and it was said that when herius was born her looked at this baby and saw that he was ugly deformed in some way so threw him off mount’s Olympus um eventually he manages
To work his way back and and becomes an Olympian God and heas isn’t just any deity he’s one of the 12 foremost gods in the Greek pantheon though he was left out to die as a child ancient Athenians even dedicated a temple to heas his Shrine
Just happens to be located at the agura right near the well where the dead baby’s bones were found coincidence Susan rro wanted to find out after careful inspection of the exact location of the well she concluded that the site had been chosen purposefully I think the main reason
That the well was used for that purpose was that the neighborhood was abandoned but it was convenient it wasn’t far away so a private are area that you could use for the task of dealing with the bodies of these babies so back in the day the ancient well was a place where physically
Disabled newborns could be abandoned to die without causing an Outcry but not all of the 450 dead baby remains found there had physical impairments why did they too end up in the well once again it was the skulls that put the researchers on the right track I found a lot of Bones had evidence of a sort of spongy growth on
Top of the underlying normal bone and this happens when there’s a bacterial infection so it’s a bacterial menitis potentially and in a world without antibiotics of course this would be fatal due to the often poor hygienic conditions infections at Birth were no Rarity in the classical era for example a non-sterilized
Implement used to cut the umbilical cord could lead to the infant Contracting a deadly infection many new parents of the day thus suffered the bitter loss of a newborn I’m used to working with human remains but in dealing with this large number of infants it was really very
Emotional at time these are babies who died they’re parents grieved for them and at times it was very hard to maintain an emotional separation the size of the bone that is the stage of its growth enabled the Anthropologist to determine the age of each baby at the time of its death the
Result not one of the babies from the well had lived for more than a week in other words shortly after birth the mothers had Liv Lally handed their babies over to die it appeared The Mystery of the well at the Athens agura had been solved but one question
Remained why would the dead infants not buried at a normal Cemetery the Athenians had a ceremony it was called the idia by which a child was accepted into the family and into society took place about a week or 10 days after birth in the ampid dromia ritual the Midwife would carry the infant
Ceremoniously around an open Fire at the end of the round she then set the child down at the feet of its Father the child was only officially welcomed into the family fold when the father picked it up from the Floor any child that did not have the Good Fortune to live long enough to go through that ceremony would not be regarded as a full person a full member of society and therefore they would not receive the normal burial rights and that’s why the 450 dead babies were not buried at the cemetery
Just outside the city Gates as was customary they died too young to be inducted ceremonially into full personhood so their bodies were disposed of in a well but the mass grave at the bottom of the well not only contained infant Remains the researchers made another unusual Discovery there amongst the baby
Bones they also found the skeletons of 150 dogs the age distribution of the bones is very different from what you expect of the normal die off of urban dogs most of these were young adults um although there were also puppies and a few older dogs but it was clear these were not
Dogs who were all dying of natural causes they were being Chosen and put into the well but how does all that relate to the birth the ancient Greeks believed that birth was a source of impurity all the more so when the baby was born with a deformity or was still Born dogs could be used as a kind of ritual cleanser there was a notion that if they were sacrific they somehow richly cleansed those that they were sacrificed with but also I think probably the fact that um dogs are being put into this well I imagine it’s because the parents the community
Thought that these children were going off into the underworld on for this difficult dangerous journey and it would be helpful for them to have dogs traveling with them there is much to support this resolution of the curious case over 80 years after the remains of the 450
Babies were found in the ancient Athens well The two scientists have shed light on their fate we know that a lot of infants died they are not in the cemeteries we can’t see them and suddenly for a brief period we are seeing those children we know what they’re dying of and they’re not
Invisible anymore and I think that is what resonates for me and so one mystery dating back to Antiquity has been solved what had at first looked like evidence of a brutal crime turned out to be nothing nothing more than an unusual burial Right the great fire of Rome many centuries later it’s still not clear who or what started it was it the act of an emperor gone mad Rome capital city of the Roman Empire in the year 64 ad it was a bright clear full moon night at the height of
Summer suddenly a torch was set a light and a fire started the blaze soon ran rampant throughout the City by mourning the ancient Metropolis Rome stood in Flames the great far of Rome was a genuine disaster and it destroyed huge SES of this beautiful Capital there are
Fires in the ancient world but nothing on this scale that we know of despite all attempts to extinguish the Flames the great fire raged on for more than a week entire districts of the city fell victim to the configration it left 200,000 Romans homeless many others had lost their lives in the Flames we’re talking a city of about a million so this is the Mega city of the ancient world how many people died died in this Raging Fire thousands tens of thousands it’s a big open question the destruction was so extensive that Romans couldn’t believe it had been just an unfortunate
Accident although Emperor Nero hurried to the scene from antium 60 km away many in Rome suspected him of being behind the arson attack wasn’t Nero an eccentric after all a raving lunatic even an image that has stuck to the present day Nero is a household name today and
If you say his name people think of this uh deranged excessive Roman Emperor be still be still that’s also down to the enduring Hollywood version of the emperor in quanus Peter hustoff betrays him as quite mad indeed fromit illum me I am one with the gods this scene more
Than any other has formed the image of Nero in the collective Consciousness that the ruler had set fire to his own City in the pursuit of some crazy plans if that wasn’t true you’d have to make it Up but was Nero really insane and was the emperor really behind his own Capital Going Up in Flames this question is the subject of great interest in Vienna the birthplace of psychoanalysis here well-known psychiatrist Dr haral Ashawa a court appointed expert has studied Nero’s genealogy for years he wanted to find
Out if anything in the emperor’s family history would support the claim of Nero’s mental disorders we know for sure that certain ailments are present in the nuro family when you look at the whole family tree epileptic illnesses for example we also find records of depression and anxiety disorders Nero’s genealogy revealed a
Conspicuously frequent instance of marriages between relatives that could be a cause of hereditary genetic diseases such as epilepsy but Nero himself presents further psychiatric indications primarily an impulse control disorder Nero was married to his second wife popea Sabina when she was pregnant for the second time the historical record tells us he killed her by kicking her in the stomach on the other hand he reportedly also mourned the loss of this woman deeply he then went on to have sexual
Contact with men who look similar to his deceased wife to determine whether Nero really was clinically insane the expert compared all the Roman Emperor’s documented psychiatric indications with the current criteria of the icd10 the who’s comprehensive classification of psychiatric disorders in other words a catalog of characteristics that point to a psychiatric
Disorder someone with a narcissistic personality disorder displays various characteristics for example excessive arrogance very little emotion or empathy for other people he is purported to have some of these characteristics but doesn’t show the full profile of a narcissistic personality disorder the psychiatrist concluded that neuro fulfilled only four out of nine
Criteria of a narcissistic personality disorder for Dr aawa that could mean only one thing according to today’s diagnostic schema nuro did not have a psychiatric Illness but even if Nero wasn’t certifiably insane that doesn’t clear him of arson he was after all his fellow Roman’s Prime Suspect who are you going to blame
You’re going to blame the guy in charge ultimately particularly because we see what Nero does afterwards he takes a lot of the destroyed City and he builds up a massive Palace on a scale that no one had ever seen before so he really seems to be taking advantage of the
Destructive forces of the city for himself and that really is going to anger a lot of people so Nero did have a motive for the crime he could actually have been the Unseen hand behind the arson attack but was The Great Fire of Rome even a case of arson at all
An archaeological experiment would hopefully answer this question fire protection expert Tanya bookm and weapons expert Mike loads were making final preparations they aimed to shed light on the Obscure events of the night Rome burned it’s not easy so many years after an incident normally you’re right
Away there and you can see what happened and you can can feel the heat still but this is cold this is a cold case but there is evidence look at this there’s still pla spots on the floor Scorch marks Yeah and there you see what happens if there really really hot temperature going on in the building well what what sort of temperature would it take to to melt metal like that way over th000 de so from all this evidence you can trace a map of where the fire
Went with the help of the still visible Scorch marks the experts were able to reverse engineer the progression of the fire combining their calculations with eyewitness reports it was possible to determine exactly where the fire 2,000 years ago must have originated on the south side of the famous circus
Maximus we know the circus Maximus had lots of buildings around it sell selling food selling glass selling clothing selling everything the Roman citizen wanted cuz he went to the races he won some money on the races and he wented to go to spend the money on the races sure
They had some little fires to prepare the food there too and there would be perfect you see there would be food fires barbecues to prepare the food so we have lots of reasons why there could be ignition it doesn’t have to be aren doesn’t have to be Nero no no it doesn’t
Have to be nearer so the fire had started in the immediate vicinity of the circus Maximus venue of the famous Roman Chariot races that supports the idea that Nero was not in fact behind it because the emperor’s own Palace was also located right by the racetrack why would he have
Taken the risk of losing it to the Flames as well we know that Nero had a very valuable large AR collection it was housed in the Imperial Palace and did in fact fall victim to the fire a source of great suffering for Nero he would never have taken that
Risk but why the rumors that Nero is behind the arson attack in whose interest would it have been to accuse him Nero’s had a very bad press so he’s come down through history as uh kind of mad bad and dangerous to know he kind of didn’t do things the Roman way that
Means that he had powerful enemies so there were men within the Senate who didn’t trust him um and who were very ready to Blacken his name the Senate was the true Center of power in the Roman Empire no Emperor could rule against the will of the Senate the relationship between Nero and
The Senate changed evolved over time and you’re going to see that in his legislation you’re going to see in his behavior megalomania will will increase as his his uh Reign extends there is no doubt that the longer Nero was in power the more excessive his egocentricity and delusions of grandeur became that
Resulted in a form of Imperial dictatorship now also known as Caesarism aren’t all Roman emperors megalomaniac the fact that they begin to think of themselves as uh being Divine uh that they have command of this extraordinary Empire that ends up commanding a fifth of the world’s population so he’s not alone uh in his megalomaniac Tendencies now thiso that’s
The image of Nero that has solidified over the centuries but not all of it is true in fact a large part of it is just invention back to the fire experiment the experts wanted to test their theory that the great fire of Rome could also be explained without
Arson this mockup of a little ancient Roman half timbered Cottage would help them find out only the screws were modern the structure would be set Al light to find out how the fire could have spread so fast so here we’ve got a typical Hut that might be around the circus Maxim
Can you imagine it on race day thousands of people and what do you want to do on race day eat exactly so I think Huts like this there would be barbecues there would be roasting chickens there would be spit roasting pigs there would be fire in
Here close to the fire Source near the circus Maximus there were hundreds of little Cottages like this furnished inside simply with straw St when the straw caught fire the interior temperature Rose causing the outer clay plaster to burst this just flakes away once that’s burning this is out and now
That’s a light and then you got the oxygen getting in there and the fire spreads everywhere so it just needs one thing to go wrong yeah just one Ember to fall out of the chicken raster’s fire to set fire to the straw the straw then knocks the plaster off the oxygen comes
Out and the whole thing now goes up one thing we know for certain is the wind we know there was a even bigger than today we know there was a wind because the archaeological evidence tells us it shows us with the black scarring how the fire spread around the city we know from
The chroniclers ah Deus and suetonius and tacitus even though tacitus was only eight he’s a pretty good but did he really see it all when he was eight so that that’s a little bit of guess workor there but they all say there was a big wind it was time to get
Serious the torch was set a light the experiment could now begin so we can’t really know whether this was an Arsen attack or whether it was an accident so what Tanya and I want to find out is if we do start a fire here how quickly will it
Start it doesn’t go that quickly does it oh takes some time but when it gets the heat now you see now it’s going upwards and the Flames are licking inside already now the clay is cracking and see smoke coming out of the clay over there
So why why is this because of the Heat and this water in a clay and water expands and it cracks up the clay now look yeah yeah look at that it’s going up there now we really do start to have something so the big question is how
Could they put this out you could still put this out with a bucket of water that’s what they had now we need to go and find some people with buckets of water should okay let’s go but there is another reason why the fire was able to spread so quickly in
The narrow Lanes of ancient Rome the reality is most people are living living in apartment buildings and the apartment buildings are made of brick for the first several stories but beyond them they’re made of wood due to the Statics of ancient Roman apartment houses only the lower floors
Were made of masonry the upper stories were half timbered or entirely of wood that was where the poor were housed and we know that particular poor families would then kind of erect crates on the roof so there was a huge amount of of wood in the city the accommodation
Was very very tightly packed particularly in the center so it’s basically um a a Tinder Box waiting for disaster Builders of the day paid little mind to fire protection open fires in homes were the norm a nightmare for the firefighters that did in fact exist in ancient
Rome so you have one fire department for every two regions and there are 14 regions uh in the city of Rome and these are people that are specifically trained to fight fires how are you fighting a fire you’ve got bucket brigades you have pumping systems they tap into uh The
Fountains throughout the city so you actually have people trained to fight fires but how effective was the ancient Roman fire department to find out modern firefighters would here use the technology of antiquity to try to save a burning Roman cottage from the Flames a similar scenario to the night of the
Great fire of Rome I’ve sent this thing a light I don’t know maybe maybe it’s the The Bakers and he’s gone away and his oven’s gone up and now we can start to see look at the smoke people are going to panic right now cuz the smoke is toxic and
They can’t breathe it’s catching quite quickly isn’t it and what we’ve got to imagine is that just there there’s hundreds and hundreds of these shops and this is full full of people that’s a configration that’s a that makes you that melt your face the firefighters formed a Bucket
Brigade and began to extinguish the Flames this is how it’s done they’re coming in with buckets for a great conflagration like this it’s chains of men with buckets now they had a fire brigade but it wouldn’t be this easy Tanya come and join me because we are escaping from the
Circus Maximus we are in their way so we are now slowing these guys down because we are a panicking crowd and they don’t know where to go so we’re now making a great big mess and it’s slowing everything down because we’ve got panicking crowds getting in the way and
That is really going to make this a much harder challenge for these people to put this fire out and what we will also find today is quite a still day but if it wasn’t such a still day then what you would get is you would get little bits
Of Ember and then this is blown by the great wind and it’s thrown into another building and so it goes on over the Seven Hills of Rome Embers flying from Street to Street streets become rivers of Fire in the end the old school Arsenal was no match for the Flames the firefighters were exhausted finally they were allowed to extinguish the Flames as usual within seconds the fire was put Out it’s c firefighters back then couldn’t just roll up with a fire truck they had no way of pouring thousands of liters of water onto the Flames so the ancient Roman firefighters had to use bucket relays to transport water from the Ci’s Wells to the fire hotpots The Missing Link in their
Equipment chain was the fire hose which the Romans didn’t invent until later so the fire departments sometimes had to Res resort to another last Option an effective means of fighting fires within the city was to lay fire Brakes in other words to pull down whole buildings sometimes even all the structures along a street so that the fire couldn’t jump from one building to the next or to the neighboring Street of course the people who lived
There weren’t thrilled about that they were perhaps delighted that their house hadn’t yet caught fire and then the emperor man arrived and tore the walls down another explanation for why the Romans were so quick to suspect Nero of arson to divert suspicion from himself to others he sought a scapegoat and
Found one in the Christians the Christians are an easy target at this time they are becoming popular particularly with soldiers um their message of social equality and the possibility of an afterlife is is very attractive to fighting men so I think in a way uh Nero is killing two birds with one
Stone the emperor was suspicious of the Christians he feared The Growing Power of the new sect he decided to make an example of them he does affect uh terrible abominable uh cruel punishments for these Christians the issue with this though is that when Christianity takes hold of Western and indeed Eastern
Europe those who write history are Christians and so Nero becomes the ultimate uh evil Roman Emperor so to put it precisely Nero was the victim of Christian propaganda he went down in the annals of history as the arsonist of Rome because Christian chroniclers had taken the opportunity to exact their
Revenge from illegal standpoint this much is clear as long as no further Evidence is produced Nero 2 is predicted by the principle of Roman law in dubio Pro Rio when end doubt for the accused the most important temple in the ancient Egyptian world was plundered what was behind the desecration of the
Shrine thieves in the year 1348 BC this was the the religious center of the Kingdom of Egypt the Metropolis on the Nile was rocked by a horrendous act of violence the main Temple of the realm was ravaged the chief God from about sort of 1850 1900 BC in Egypt was Amon Reay and
He was the head of the pantheon it didn’t mean that other gods weren’t important but he became the state and official God so the Kings would focus on him the ancient Egyptians believed the temple was the residence of Amun ra that the god actually lived there among the
People so for the Contemporary populace the desecration and destruction of their most important sanctuary was an unspeakable Calamity especially because none other than Pharaoh akatan was behind it it’s a bit like if the pope today were to go set fire to the cine Chapel everyone would ask what’s with him has he gone
Mad the destruction of religious SES and symbols is a time honored weapon used by the powerful to demoralize those of a different Faith thus Charlemagne Set Fire to the legendary imans saw the seat of Saxon paganism likewise Sultan memor II upon conquering Constantinople immediately had the famous Hagia Sophia turned from
A church into a mosque the brutal crimes of pharaoh akatan were also of historical Dimensions the temple desecration was the violent climax of the devastation of society at large akan natan’s ultimate aim was to bring down found the ancient Egyptian religion to replace the whole Pantheon of gods with one lesser sun god
Aton the Aton is an aspect of the Sun God and existed in you know 2400 25 2600 BC but he was a minor aspect of the S God so what akatan did was take this little known God and raise him to Great Heights and replace amanra with the tin the Egyptians traditionally
Worshiped a whole panoply of gods each with a special function from provincial Gods only relevant in individual cities up to gods of the realm worshiped in official cultic acts of State akatan wanted to replace them all with attin which plunged the entire culture into chaos the lives of the Egyptian people
Were seeped in religion everything was down to the will of the Gods so what akatan did pushing the many gods and goddesses into the background in favor of tin was an absolute Scandal an absolute to help solidify his Revolution agenda aanan had a huge provocation carved in stone erected in honor of his
New monotheistic National deity a Monumental shrine to Aton measuring 760 M by 275 M it was the largest temple of its Time aatan finally left thieves altogether and built a new city for himself and his God in the middle of the desert a pristine spot untainted by all the old gods to serve serve as his command post for ruling the Realm he moved the capital city to a place that really had not seen much activity before and this is called aatan by him the Horizon of the Aton where his God was preeminent once relocated to the new imperial capital aranan and his followers could devote themselves fully
To the atan cult though the people remained unconvinced outside of AET atan they clung fiercely to their old Faith why did akatan plunge his kingdom into chaos contemporaries thought he was insane London at the medical school of the renowned Imperial College clinical lecturer Dr hutan ashrafian has studied
The case looking for a possible medical explanation for Aran aran’s actions he also closely examined the physical depictions of the renowned Pharaoh that have survived from Antiquity what we can say is that this is a standard image of akatan he has a very elongated face and it’s inverse
Chronicle he also has quite large breasts and very feminized hips with a saggy abdomen so clearly something’s AB normal and ainan wasn’t the only member of his family depicted this way historical likenesses of his fourbears and Offspring show similar traits their sculptures show that they for example had feminized features and
Enlarged breast also now this on top of the fact that in each generation from his predecessors to his descendants but we also have the evidence that people were dying sequentially earlier at younger ages down the line and so these two say that there’s a genetic condition the medical indications are
Evidence of a hereditary genetic disorder within akatan family a condition that severely curtailed the physical development and lifespan of The Afflicted there are a handful of conditions that could link all of these things together but specifically temporal lobe epilepsy which is a type of epilepsy that originates in the sides of the head called the temporal area that controls emotion visual memory but also sex hormones could account for a disease
That would link up aranan and his predecessors and his descendants aanan could have suffered from a form of epilepsy that changes the hormonal status of The Afflicted in the case of men this can lead to a feminization of the Body and because the disease is seated in the temporal loes of the brain brain it can also trigger psychotic Disorders temporal lobe epilepsy has long been associated with psychological symptoms it’s a type of epilepsy that originates in the temporal area of the brain which here at the sides and it’s associated with visual memory and emotion it can induce symptoms of hyper religiosity which makes one feel that they are in the Pres
Of a very powerful Godlike individual historical sources do in fact report that akatan was beset by religious visitations there are indications that the solar disc that is his symbol appeared to aranan in such a state were his actions then the result of an epileptic Illness so temporal OB epilepsy is the most common type of epilepsy and it is approximately present in between half a percent to 1% of the population and would have been so in ancient Egypt just as it is today so in the case of aranan as he would have got
Older he would have had more episodes of temporal loob epilepsy and this would have given him more and more Sentiments of psychological disease and religious Zeal that could account for what he did in his life evidence does indicate that Aran Aran was afflicted in arriving at his diagnosis clinical lecturer Dr ashrafian relied
Heavily on the image of the Pharaoh that characterizes almost all depictions of him but what if there is an altogether different explanation you have the king the queen who was no relative the daughter daers being shown like this and also many people in the court um because of course
What the king is shown as is immediately copied by people the reality of what the King was is hard to establish because he might have chosen to depict himself in this way not because he looked like this but because he was trying to convey a message so perhaps the statures of
Aranan do not reflect his actual appearance in fact this blend of male and female attributes also appears in other contemporary likenesses of people not in the pharaoh’s bloodline the explanation could be connected to Aran aran’s new atan cult the Aton of whom he is the living Incarnation he was both
Male and female he was the force that brought creation into being so one could also interpret this as aatan trying to convey a concept which is very common in Egyptian art that you are trying to convey a whole concept by one image but what might Artin’s aim have
Been with his unprecedented attack on the very foundations of Egyptian Society one of the reasons that we think that this was going on was because the priests of Arman Ray had gained a huge amount of power privilege land and wealth and temples played a major role
In the economy as well as in employment because most people at one point of the other worked for a temple over many generations the priests had gained immense influence over the politics of the realm akatan destroyed the priest’s power Base by suppressing the old gods and limiting access to his
One exclusive new guard in the Aran cult the Pharaoh and his family were the high priests so perhaps akatan religious Revolution was really a brutal instrument to leverage power consolidate his kingdom and derail the priest class akatan was trying to get power back for the king and less power to the
Priesthood but the way in which he did it meant that Egypt was really for a while thrown into a mess for the Egyptians the actions of akatan whether down to mental illness or power hunger were unforgivable for that reason akatan was later removed from historical records and statues and reliefs of him
Destroyed deasha memor is basically annihilating someone um and sort of killing their memory so that it was as if they had never existed and for the Egyptians your memory your name is very crucial because this is what makes you live for a eternity no one wanted to be reminded of
The existence of this Pharaoh his religious Revolution was considered inexcusable not only during his lifetime but 50 years on too only after his death was the Kingdom of Egypt the culture able to revive the people could breathe a sigh of relief under akatan son the worship of the old gods was reintroduced to
Egyptian culture the new Pharaoh demonstratively cast off his birth name and adopted the name of the traditional god of the realm Amon thus tutan Katan became the famous child Pharaoh tutan Kon
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